Kenmore Sugar Dryer

[Cedar Eater]

I've only been in the maple sugar hobby for a little over a week, but I really want to try making birch syrup when that starts to run. I just finished my first full quart batch of maple syrup yesterday, and seeing how much propane it took to do that, the thought of making birch syrup in equal quantities by boiling more than twice as much sap is making me glad that I got started on next year's wood fired evaporator this year. My parents had an old Kenmore dryer and an old Hotpoint washer that had been sitting out in the weather for the past year or so. I like to repurpose old stuff into new stuff, and I've worked on washers and dryers in the past, so I imagined how I could build a small evaporator from the parts of a laundry pair. This is the dryer.

http://i.imgur.com/q6g6XCk.jpg

I gutted both appliances and took inventory of the parts. I was just going to use the front of the washer as the back side of the evaporator, but the dryer had a really thick strong wall in the back that I thought would be more structurally strong. It was a few inches forward of the back edge, but I wanted the extra room, so I moved it to the back. Before and after pics.

http://i.imgur.com/vJPhpJW.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/YA0zO6U.jpg

I have one 4" deep SS steam table pan and I wanted it near the back, because I assumed that would be where the heat is highest, but I wanted the possibility of adding a second 6" pan later, so I took a chance and decided to offset the stack to one side and put the 4" pan nearest it, running front to back.

http://i.imgur.com/4bKJpGj.jpg

I'm limited to four images per post, so I'll continue in another.

[Cedar Eater]

Top load washers have a thick steel tub that holds the water and an even thicker and heavier drum that fits inside the tub and holds the clothing. The drum has many holes for when the water is being spun out of the clothing. I figured those holes would provide enough combustion air. It also has a ballast chamber running around the top to help it stay balanced when it is spinning. I figured that would help keep it from warping from the heat. After some cutting on the back wall of the dryer, and the front edge of the tub, the tub fit inside the dryer shell. I put a piece of sheet metal inside it to hold the sand that will eventually sit under the drum. For the first test boil and paint burnoff, I just set the drum directly inside. Here's the tub sitting in the shell.

http://i.imgur.com/tozWh1j.jpg

And here's the tub with the drum inside it. On the right of this photo, you can also see where I added sheet metal behind the top half of the dryer's back wall and installed the elbow for the stack. I also cut six 1" diameter holes evenly spaced around the tub for combustion air.

http://i.imgur.com/YfGdSuh.jpg

I reinforced the top from front to back at the center by reusing an angled piece of thick steel from the self leveling feet of the washer.I hauled it out for the test boil today. I loaded the wood and lit the fire through the pan hole in the top.

http://i.imgur.com/Q5rhozj.jpg

As you can see below, it gets hot enough to burn the paint, but the drum and tub shield well enough to keep the bottom half from getting as hot as the unshielded top half.

http://i.imgur.com/g4UVRG4.jpg

[Cedar Eater]

And here's the proof that it will boil water.

http://i.imgur.com/fhGbbLf.jpg

It took a long time to get the fire hot enough to boil when the pan was full. I didn't have well seasoned wood and I didn't seal up all the joints and holes yet. But eventually, the top got so hot that the wood that I was drying on the left half smoldered. I'm thinking I should add another 4' section to the stack to improve the draft, and I plan to brace the stack either way. I also need to add a door latch of some sort and there are plenty of sharp edges that could use some dulling. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it. I think I'll start shopping for a 6" pan for the left side.

[eustis22]

that may be the most unique idea for a stove I've yet seen

[Cedar Eater]

that may be the most unique idea for a stove I've yet seen

Someone else here made a stove from a dryer. I searched here after I thought of it. He didn't use parts from a washer and he made a more traditional design with a long flue duct. I know from past experience that you can get used kaput appliances from appliance stores that take old ones away when they sell a new one. They normally sell them to a scrapper, but they will sometimes just give them to anyone who will haul them home, especially if you've ever bought a new appliance from them.

I don't have a cutting torch. That would have made some of the work a lot easier, faster, and probably safer. I broke a few sawsall blades and got a few minor cuts on my hands while building this franken-arch. And now I have a garage full of washer and dryer parts that I have to scrap. I repurposed the dryer drum, which was much too big to turn up inside the dryer shell. It will be a ring for future campfires.

[Cedar Eater]

I took the top off the dryer shell to inspect everything and remove the drum so that I could add sand to the bottom of the tub. I discovered that a plastic plug that had been covering a port in the top of drum had melted away and the drum was now leaking some kind of sparkly sand through that port. I drained the sand into the washer tub and the drum weighs much less now. Here's a picture of the now empty ballast ring.

http://i.imgur.com/2HoiiN2.jpg

There's a ballast ring around the top of most washer drums. Sometimes they're in the steel drum and sometimes they're in the plastic ring. They contain salt water in some drums. I drained the sand out of the drum into the bottom of the tub. I figure it won't hurt if it mixes with the sand I'm going to bed the drum in.

[Cedar Eater]

I used a 3/4" clamp style bushing, normally used for holding Romex that enters metalic electrical boxes, to clamp the two pieces of a latch through a hole in a piece of sheet metal that I cut from the washing machine.

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I made a small notch in the dryer shell so the door can be held in the partially open position.

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[Cedar Eater]

During my test boil, the washer drum almost half blocked the porthole in the doorway so I didn't have much room to feed wood into it. I wanted to add some sand under the drum which would make the problem worse, so I eyeballed the hinges for the door and determined that I could solve the problem by flipping the front bottom to top and then flipping the door.

Before:
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After:
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I might end up bumping the steam table pans while adding wood now, but at least I'll have more room than I had. Next steps, a grate to hold the wood up and some cheap insulation for the shell walls.

[Cedar Eater]

I've only been able to work on my evaporator in small doses. I got a 6" deep steam table pan and made a hole in the dryer top for it. I added pink fiberglass insulation to the inside of the dryer shell. I added sand to the tub. I finished making a grate today. I don't have a welder and I didn't want to buy a finished grate, so I bought about $50 worth of cheap black iron piping fittings and made this:

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[chad]

try to fill the pipes of your grate with sand it will help keep them from warping

[Cedar Eater]

try to fill the pipes of your grate with sand it will help keep them from warping

Thanks. I'll have to buy some more fittings for that, but it might help.

[chad]

you could just tape the bottom of the pipes shut to get the sand in it to start

[smokeyamber]

Wow, I am the guilty party with a Dryerator, I used the dryer for the firebox and added on the back with bedframe material, I do have a welder, saws and way too many ideas about recycling stuff. A couple of things I learned on my build, the firebox should be raised up pretty close to pan, you can also use the outlet port for the dryer as a place to run a blower in for AUF. Fiberglass insulatikon ... Melts... find some Roxall ( rock wool ). Another good sized firebox for a hotel pan is a filing cabinet, I plan to build one of those with my kids for them to boil on.

[Cedar Eater]

Wow, I am the guilty party with a Dryerator, I used the dryer for the firebox and added on the back with bedframe material, I do have a welder, saws and way too many ideas about recycling stuff. A couple of things I learned on my build, the firebox should be raised up pretty close to pan, you can also use the outlet port for the dryer as a place to run a blower in for AUF. Fiberglass insulatikon ... Melts... find some Roxall ( rock wool ). Another good sized firebox for a hotel pan is a filing cabinet, I plan to build one of those with my kids for them to boil on.

I've been thinking of just bolting another dryer onto the back for next year to add two more pans. Then I'll run the stack out the back of that. I'll just form a false floor in it and throw some insulation on top of that. I'm not really worried about the fiberglass melting, as longs as it stops melting at some point. It's 6" thick and I'm kind of hoping it gets a thick black crust that protects the final 2-3 inches. I'll wait and see.

I haven't had much time to work on it. I've got the grate filled with sand and I built a tent over a trailer to use as a sugar shack during the birch sap run.

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[Cedar Eater]

I did my second test boil today and I'm ready to start processing sap. There are still some tweaks I think would help, but considering that I was able to get the 6" pan simmering with 5 inches of water in it, and the 4" pan boiling very well with 3" in it, I think I can tweak between batches.

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While I was boiling, something really cool that I was hoping for happened. The tiny holes around the drum turned into multiple individual flame jets facing inward as the air that came in through them fed the gases that came from the wood. It got really hot and started to roar when that happened.

I made some changes to the test bed to make it easier and safer to get in and out.

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The ash that I was burning made huge long-burning coals. I might try some faster-burning softwoods to see if I can get up to boiling temp quicker.

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